Little Boxes on the Hillside
by Lionfire42
Summary: His death had hit her harder than any of them. The last of her family was gone-and she was left a shell of herself. She swore to never go into battle again, especially not with the creature that wore his face. But as the war heats up, Arcee finds her sense of duty, buried as it is, to be unabated, and the memory of partner not gone-but transformed. Part of the Cannon Fodder Series.


_Little boxes on the hillside,  
Little boxes made of ticky tacky_

He'd been her partner. Her best friend. Her brother.

Jack Darby had been, she'd thought, a coward. Optimus had explained the dangers of the Decepticons to their new charges, yet after one battle, he'd panicked and fled.

But then she brought him back. And he came back with a vengeance.

She was determined to simply protect him, no more or less. Her manner was less than charming, her glossa rendering the smartest bots mute.

But he withstood her scorching remarks and distant aloof manner. Before she knew it, when she faced off against Airachnid, he had wormed his way into her spark, as he stood brave and courageous against the hellish creature.

And years later, she one day glanced at the boy who had become a man, and realized he held her spark in his hand. And he had no idea.

She was terrified, and fled, away from the fort, into the desert. She ignored communications from Optimus and Ratchet, hoping that the harshness of the desert could restore her scathing wit and icy shell.

But on the second night, he'd come after her. He'd parked the borrowed Jeep on the hill above her, and casually slid down the sandy slope, softly singing a warbling tune.

_Little boxes on the hillside,  
Little boxes all the same_

"Nice night, isn't it?"

"What do you want, Jack?" She wished she hadn't snapped at him like that.

But he'd endured her moods before and simply leaned against her, crossing his arms and gazing at the stars. She resisted the urge to lean away and let him fall as he began to speak.

"You really shouldn't run off like that. Sanchez nearly had an aneurism. He was ready to send the military after you."

"Yes," Arcee snorted. "Wouldn't want to lose one of his tin soldiers."

"Sanchez is paranoid. But it isn't unreasonably for someone who doesn't know you to assume you'd gone rogue, or worse, joined Soundwave."

That was logical but logic was Shockwave's domain, and she had never been one to listen it herself. "He knows I'm loyal."

"Not to him," was the ominous reply.

Arcee slammed to her pedes, glaring down at her partner, fins twitching in agitation. "We're not his pets!" she all but screamed. "He doesn't control us!"

"I never said he did," Jack paused to light a cigarette, a new habit of his. He let the opaque smoke drift away and disperse into the night air. Arcee opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Jack's eyes were gazing at something far away, and when they finally refocused on her, his words were solemn and grave.

"Sanchez is an unfortunately necessary person in command. He is not a great man. He is greedy and paranoid, cruel and unbiased. But he commands respect, even if it is not my own. He is a leader, even if he is the most unpreferable one."

He took another puff on his cigarette. "He will never be a great leader. And he will certainly never be a great friend. But sometimes, Arcee, the best leaders never make the best friends."

At that moment she wished, as she had wished many times before, that Jack was a bot. Because more than ever, she desired to see how well he would lead them as a Prime. Optimus was a great leader, but his one weakness was his idealism. Even as he fought Megatron to a standstill, one could see that the memories of the brother he'd had on Cybertron remained, and that he still held some hope that Megatron could be saved from himself.

But Jack…Jack was practical. And he was smart. He had a way of weighing his dreams against reality and understanding where one could succeed and where the other should die.

"So you coming back?" The cigarette was flipped into the sands, and moon glinted off a flash of teeth bared into a dazzling smile. "We don't want too much sand in those gears, do we?"

And so they'd returned, her spark lifted into the air by his soft tune:

_There's a green one and a pink one__  
And a blue one and a yellow one,  
And they're all made out of ticky tacky  
And they all look just the same._

Jack was an original. Jack was one of a kind.

And now he was just a copy. A hundred little copies — and they all looked just the same.

Sanchez, that little piece of scrap, he'd boasted about how the war could be turned around, how easily the clones responded to orders.

She'd walked out halfway through. Not a word passed from her lips. She remained as silent as she had been for weeks, ever since the funerals. When Tailgate, and later Cliffjumper, had died, she had been consumed with rage. It had flowed through her like the energon she consumed, an inferno burning brighter and hotter with every second a 'Con lived.

And now she was empty. Soundwave was dead, but his army remained, guided by mysterious leadership. And she was just so _sick_ of it.

The meeting had been on a Sunday. She woke up Wednesday, in the medbay, with an aching processor. Apparently, Ratchet told her in his tight, clipped tone, that she'd gotten into the high-grade energon, and had holed up in an empty warehouse. People had left her alone, until she had gotten so drunk, she'd charged the area where the clones were being manufactured, screaming about identical houses and ticky tacky.

Optimus came to her and quietly informed her that she would be allowed to take command of her battalion when she felt well enough. She didn't bother to acknowledge him; any respect she'd ever felt for him had been washed away when she discovered just who had supported Sanchez's little experiments. Besides, it didn't matter.

She'd never feel well again.

So she languished, optics empty, for half a decade, the grief and the pain and the loneliness pushing her to the edge of insanity. Bulkhead was too lost in his own grief, and later hatred, to comfort her. Bumblebee was protective of Raf, the last of the charges, and when the young genius was transferred to another, more secure base to continue his weapons work, the golden scout and his battalion followed. To Smokescreen, a young mech with dreams of glory, she was just a washed-up old-timer, though she was barely older than him. She accompanied him occasionally, but only for scouting missions—she hadn't unsheathed her blades in years.

But then Soundwave's army stole the remnants of the Nemesis and with it the Omega Lock. A series of fortresses were constructed with the mystical power of the Ancients, each greater and more terrible than Megatron's original Darkmount. It the first time Optimus actually _ordered_ her to battle in years.

So she came, grimacing at her slow reaction speeds and awkward shots. The clones, waves upon waves of bodies, were at a standstill, hesitating from all sides of Shadowfell to continue.

As she fired, two Vehicons were barreling at her from the side; her diminished speed couldn't allow her to defend…

A well aimed shot, one fired from a human rifle, tore a hole through one's optic, allowing her to finish the other off as he hesitated.

She risked a backwards glance, as a clone leading a growing group of others rushed forwards, obviously assuming that they were under her command now. The leader's shoulder flashed with his ID code: R-103134.

A flicker of something — Pride? Pain? Respect? – begin to warm in her spark. She vented and transformed.

She led once. She would lead again.

For her partner. Her best friend. Her brother.

And so she charged, leading an army a ticky tacky.

* * *

**This part of the Cannon Fodder series has been sitting in my files for over a month. Now that this small fry is out of the way I seriously NEED to finish Stop the Clock. It's just embarrassing at this point.**


End file.
